The New York Times reported in July that in “a large study of adults in Denmark … [researchers] found something they had not expected: Adults who moved frequently in childhood have significantly more risk of suffering from depression than their counterparts who stayed put in a community.”
I could have told them that. By the time I graduated from high school, I had moved 20 times. Changing locations frequently was one of the most difficult aspects of my childhood story. In fact, when I first read the article’s headline, “Moving in Childhood Contributes to Depression, Study Finds,” I wept – with gratitude. You see, there’s a story of God’s grace here.
By the time I was 10, I was already deeply sad, for more reasons than I could count. Moving again was at the top of my worry list. I did not make friends easily, and the first day in a new school felt more traumatic than being hungry or poor. And our family was both.
About that time, my family began the study and practice of Christian Science, which had been my mother’s childhood faith.
One day, I was reading a book from a favorite series. The heroine lived in the same house throughout all 25 volumes. I wanted that security so badly. I wanted to know a friend long enough to really know them, and for them to really know me.
I brought this to my Sunday School teacher one Sunday, and she took me into her arms and just held me. “I know you,” she said. She was expressing God’s love so tenderly and clearly. I knew her love was rooted in her study and practice of Christian Science, and I quickly made the connection between that tender love and her commitment to her love for God.
This was the beginning of my turning to the Bible and “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” by Mary Baker Eddy, for a sense of home, belonging, warmth, and friendship.
One day, after yet another abrupt move that included a new school as well as a new church community and Sunday School (which had become the new center of “home” for me), I came across the spiritual sense of the 23rd Psalm given in Science and Health.
One phrase especially inspired me. Here is the original verse from the Bible: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (verse 6). What stood out to me was this concluding portion of the correlative line from Science and Health: “… and I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [LOVE] for ever” (p. 578).
It doesn’t say “visit.” It says “dwell.” And it doesn’t say for a little while or until the next displacement, but forever. I glimpsed that when we’re in “the [consciousness] of [LOVE],” we’re in a house – the house that no one could ever displace us from. We take it everywhere with us. That’s because we can never be separated from God, divine Love. As God’s children, our actual identity is entirely spiritual – we’re God’s idea, forever reflecting the divine Love that made us.
This became my place of belonging – my dwelling place. I was living in a changeless, spiritual sense of home, and it lived in me. It still does. It has given me stability and security that have sustained me through over 60 moves.
In a time of housing shortages, migration, frequent changes within a foster care system, job insecurity, and a global refugee crisis, children and their families around the world are being kept on the move. Yet no matter where we are, we all have a God-given ability to know a feeling of belonging and a spiritual sense of home based on our oneness with God, Spirit. This oneness is our divine and permanent home.
Science and Health says, “Security for the claims of harmonious and eternal being is found only in divine Science” (p. 232). The kingdom of God, as Christ Jesus promised us, is within us.
I have found that this is the most secure place we can ever know. This is the place we abide in, not just pass through. This is the place of our belonging – and it is God-given, God-secured, and God-filled with love, joy, warmth, and promise. When we know that we always belong in this wholly spiritual home, we can see and feel that we are forever held secure.
Adapted from an article published in the Nov. 4, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
